Unfortunately for Samsung, it looks like their stocks are going to continue taking a beating. After Apple’s iPhone launch weekend, Samsung’s shares have fallen to a 2-year low, dropping down to about 1,161,000 won. On top of that, their profit estimates were cut from 5.7 trillion won down to 4.7 trillion won. Those are some pretty major setbacks, even for a company like Samsung.

Apple’s iPhone is part of the reason why Samsung is getting hit so hard, but other factors include other affordable smartphones from OEMs like Lenovo and Xiaomi. Samsung was the first to scoop up the bottom of the Android market, but other manufacturers are beating them at it now and Samsung can’t keep competing at the prices other devices are being sold at. Read more

Earlier today, HTC’s stock rose 6.9% (a 10th month high for the company) with investors expecting the company to turn in favorable Q2 earnings. With the HTC Desire 816 selling quite well in China combined with the positive sales and reviews of their HTC One M8 flagship, the expectations that these investors have, could pay dividends in the near future. Hopefully once the Q2 earnings come out, HTC will show their resurgence into the market.

Do you guys think with the new Desire lineup and HTC One M8, the company will finally turn things around and once again become a huge force in the mobile industry? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section!

With the recent flurry of updates to Google Play edition device updates comes the 4.4.2 update to the Sony Z Ultra GPe. It’s really good news that the Google Play edition devices are working out as well as they were supposed to be from the start. Fragmentation issues are slowly dissipating and it’s certainly nice to have a whole batch of options for devices that have stock Android and receive quick updates.

This particular update is 444MB and includes fixes for the security settings bug, the app uninstall bug, the clear data bug, and also issues with Google Now voice commands.

Let us know if any of you have received it yet and how it’s working out for you!

After last night’s suprise cameo in the Play Store, possible retail packaging of the Nexus 5 has leaked as well. And the retail packaging isn’t just catching eyes because of its design. Yes, that is a white backing being shown on the Nexus 5. It was unknown that there would be a white variant; however, this and another image (after the break) completely show the Nexus 5’s back in white. The images were snapped by Korean site UnderKG (but were removed shortly after). Two Google+ users were able to obtain the the photos and re-posted them this morning. As you can tell, LG’s logo has been stamped on the side. Hit the break for the other two images, one of which clearly show the possible white backing. Read more

Each quarter, public companies hold their earnings call with investors. Google’s was today, and CEO Larry Page began by talking about Google’s interest in multi-screen technologies— Both Chromecast and Google Glass fall under this category. Then, he mentioned smart-watches. We knew Google was working on their own version of the fast-growing device, but this is the first time we’ve heard it officially mentioned.

Google announced revenue of $14.89 billion this quarter, a 12% increase from last year’s earnings in Q3. This number soared above the expected earnings for this quarter, which is certainly great to hear considering Google didn’t hit their expected earnings in the last 2 quarters. Along with the announcement came, as expected, a huge surge in stock price— the price per share is now flirting with $1000.

Ever since the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and HTC One Google Play Edition devices launched, they’ve been all the rage. If you like the stock look, there’s a lot that you can do to make your own phone look like it’s a Google Play Edition device, even without rooting. Even better, everything in this guide includes only free apps. Jump through the break to see the best apps to download for a stock like experience. Read more

We already knew that the Moto X was going to head to the Google Play Store eventually, but we didn’t have official confirmation on whether it will be Google Play Edition (full stock) or whether it will include all of the software enhancements as it is sold on any other carrier. It seems as though the latter is true, as Leo Laporte said yesterday on This Week in Google that Guy Kawasaki (Motorola) said that it will come as sold as it is anywhere else.

This means that none of the Moto enhancements will be stripped out which is great news, because a Moto X without the enhancements is essentially a mid-range phone that has a good feel in the hand, and probably wouldn’t sell very well on the Play Store. Even if they were to decide to make the phone Google Play Edition, it wouldn’t really make much sense because the Moto X is so close to stock anyway, with just a few extra “add-ons” including Active Display notifications UI, Moto Assist, and Moto Connect.

Last week we showed you developer Paul O’Brien’s MoDaCo.SWITCH ROM which allows HTC One users to quickly switch between HTC Sense 5 UI and stock Android (as seen on the Google Play Edition of the HTC One). All you have to do is tap on one of two options— it’s that easy.

Now it looks as though they’ve opened up a signup page allowing users to try out the beta version of their app. Hit the link below to join in on all the fun.

Things certainly could have been a whole lot worse for the Taiwanese manufacturing mogul, but this news is pretty bad. HTC have reported a profit of $40 million USD after tax from revenue of $2.33 billion USD.

Their numbers are a lot better than the reported profits of $2.48 million USD from last quarter, clearly due to the release of the HTC One to more markets and due to fixes in manufacturing issues, but this quarter’s numbers were expected to be much higher.

HTC’s stock price on the Taiwanese Stock Exchange has already fallen a full dollar since the start of July, leaving it at $7.20. The company is certainly going to be in trouble and in dire need of help if they can’t find a way to boost their profits.